From Brother's Porch

 

From Brother’s Porch

     Please indulge me a bit while I recreate the view I see as I wake into this morning.

     In Blakesburg, Iowa is a house.  Its porch faces the west and runs about it a handrail.  Let us say a type of family reunion were called to sit and appreciate the Son as He went down.  I am referring to the sunset, but His time on the cross speaks in blazing oranges and bloodied reds as the sun sinks lower in a darkening sky.  Who would appreciate?  Who would look and be still?

     I would start with Grandma Nellie.  She, being Grandpa Delmar’s mother, would sit and remind us of times in her Mission Hill house making egg pancakes.  Another time she would recall when her little Cor caught the big bass from her nearby pond.  Finally, she may smile a big Norwegian smile and tell of the Easter baskets she hid behind her living room chairs for her visiting grandchildren.  That made her happy.

     Grandpa Delmar then would start in with, “Cor, remember that stink bait your dad put up in the rain gutter?  Bidee jigs!  What a smell when that lid blew off!  That was almost like the time your dad trapped the carp in the slough. Remember the stink Mark when they couldn’t get back to the river and just died there?”

     “Yah, I remember.  I also recall Old Charlie and his catfishin’ days down at the Maxwell colony.  He’d strap his cane poles to his car and down the road he’d go.  Paulie also got some time in with the Hutterites wheelin’ and dealin’ for smokes.”

     “Yah, yah,” Carrie cut in, “You sure looked tough in black leathers sitting on your motorbike. Full beard, brother!  Those were the days.  Sis, you remember us playing in the creek?”

     “Sure.  Times like that I don’t forget.  Pa, the time you got caught in the auger, how old was I then?” Marsha, my mom, would ask.

     “Oh about five.  Ran back to the house.  Felt like buckets on your feet right?” Grandpa asked.

     “Yah.  But I clearly remember that Ole Jim River threatenin’ the house a bunch of times.  Seems like every spring, we’d watch the flood waters come up.  They’d about kiss the house then recede.  Lots of carp would get trapped out in the cornfield.  Made for sloppy spearing.” Mom would say.

     Leah and Lydia would be all ears.  Their imaginative minds making the images in their minds.  Having never been to the Helgerson farm, the old stories were all they could piece together of a time when beer, smokes, and a kitchen held visitors until the wee hours of the morning.  Conversations would surely spill out onto the famous concrete steps as the lazy days told of frog catchin’, clam getting, rock hunting not to mention barn exploring and watermelon eating from the artesian well for the cattle.  More stories like the Mitten Kisser would tickle their thoughts as Sher would break in.

     “Now, now just wait!  I don’t remember all that well,” said Sherri.

     “We can all tell that one as many times Pa has recounted it,” jabbed Uncle John.

     Jewel would sit in her rocker.  Quiet as a mouse, yet her wise ears always in attention.  She had never witnessed her father-in-law’s younger times at the farm, but she could be sure they were about like this evening. With a gentle breeze and Isaac asking questions inquisitively.  Tabitha?   Don’t you know she would be prancing in the yard.  Grandma Anne giving her playful looks.

     It would be a time for a family reunion.  One to comfort this one’s soul.